Eighty years ago today a bomb exploded at the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia killing four men. The intended target, Adolf Hitler survived by a hair's breadth - as by a miracle. Operation Valkyrie, the plot to assassinate the Führer and overthrow his regime had failed.
Hitler believed he still had work to do and those who believed in his vision and movement believed the leader had been saved by a Divine Hand. A declaration issued by the pro-regime Protestant churches reads:
From the bottom of our hearts, we thank the Almighty for the salvation of the leader and ask Him to continue to keep him under His protection. This request comes with a pledge of renewed loyalty and the resolution to submit ourselves even more earnestly than before to the relentless demands of this time, to which the Fuehrer is restlessly devoting himself entirely.
They supported Hitler because they wanted to make Germany great again and believed Hitler was the man to do it.
I thought of all this as I watched Franklin Graham at the Republican Convention the other night. He came on stage after Hulk Hogan, the former wrestler/entertainer. I couldn't decide who was the greater clown and I reflected on the degradation of the party and American politics (and the Church) and that the whole affair had a carnival like atmosphere. Buried within the ethos of the event were tacit calls for violence (though they would deny this) fed by an endless stream of lies.
This is not to say the DNC is any better. It is just as much rooted in the same American moral bankruptcy and both parties are creatures of Wall Street and the US Empire. Both factions are soaked in blood and lies.
But I am far more concerned with the overtly Christian overtones to what is happening at the RNC in Milwaukee. Graham and other Christian leaders believe we've witnessed a miracle - indeed Providence itself has been rightly called a miracle in slow motion. But they miss the fact - fools that they are - that we cannot declare authoritatively at to what Providence is doing. They think God saved Trump in order to save America - and by extension the Church. Graham praised Trump using the power of the United States to empire to threaten Türkiye - compelling Erdogan to release the missionary Andrew Brunson in 2018.
One could just as easily say that God saved Trump in order to further the degradation and destruction of this wicked regime. How does he know? And though his cult does not understand this, Trumpism represents the dismantling of American power on the international stage - a move that has and will have profound effects on the US economy. The long term prognosis is one of weakness and it's a sure pathway to either world war or America's slip into being a second-tier power.
For my part, I don't really care as I'm not invested in the system and unlike the Court Evangelical Graham, I don't believe God is in some kind of special relationship or covenant with the United States.
It's so ironic that as the multi-millionaire Graham promotes the idol, the false Zion that is America and his false Messiah that will save it - he ultimately is contributing to its decline. It's poetic. And as a wolf in sheep's clothing who makes merchandise of God's people and thinks godliness is gain, he believes he serves the Church and is viewed as one of its preeminent leaders. Rather he is among those that Paul refers to as deceiving and being deceived - the Church he labours to serve, he is in fact working to destroy.
Graham will understand this someday - hopefully on this side of the grave. He believes he serves Christ but is in fact one of the deceitful workers Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 11, a thrall of Satan, a false minister of the gospel and righteousness, whose end shall be according to his works.
The fusion of American ideology - born of pagan philosophy, humanism, and worldliness with Christianity has generated a false religion - Christo-Americanism and now it's latest iteration, Christo-Trumpism. It is the duty of faithful Christians to speak out and oppose these heresies. We must do so for the glory of Christ, the honour of His Church, and for the souls of those caught up in this deceptive cult.
It was obscene watching Graham pray - watching all the silicone tarts on stage bow their heads, and the act was followed by a roar of applause. He tickled their ears. One is reminded of the kind of antics that took place in Constantinople in the decades after the emperor's 'conversion'.
There's something wrong with Evangelicalism and with its gospel of cheap grace that allows tattooed gun-toting pigs, serial adulterers, and brazenly immoral women - all to proclaim that they are Christians. Filled with pride, worldliness, self-promotion, and violence, these are people who have no interest in the religion of the New Testament, but merely use it as a fig-leaf to cover their shame, as a veneer to cover their ugliness and their true loyalties and beliefs.
Where's the Church to challenge this? As I have stated before the long-time fear of the Ecumenical Movement was that is would create a watered-down false church on the basis of watered down theology and syncretism. We see it right before our eyes but it's not based primarily on theological liberalism (though that is present more than many realize) but on American and Right-wing ideology. It has broken all the barriers between Evangelical and Catholic, Mormon and Jew, as well as outright pagan racists and the do-it-yourself veneer-Christianity that characterizes so many in that arena. The real religion on the stage and at the fore is Americanism not Christianity. Trump is like an avatar, an incarnation of the American messiah. It borrows from Christianity, uses its lexicon and its symbols but it is another religion.
Watching the circus is like living a dystopian novel or film. It's only going to get worse and like a cancer it is rotting the Church from within - as is the liberal response in other circles.
Where are the faithful to go? God has a plan - of that I am sure. We are in a Dark Age in many respects but it has almost always been so, there is no reason to despair. Discernment is needed and the faithful need to adopt the pilgrim-remnant mentality that has defined the True Church for most of Church History. These people are as lost as the Roman Catholics of the 12th century and in many ways their religion is the same - just with different forms in a different cultural context.
They are deceived - just as deceived as the German Christians who in 1944 thought Hitler was saved by a miracle in order to serve the good. In terms of God's Providence, Hitler was to live another nine months. Why? We don't know. We cannot discern God's plan. Even 80 years later looking back, we cannot say why. We can maybe say something about the judgment he represented in terms of Germany and the world war, but why did he survive in July 1944 - in order to live on until the end of April 1945? We don't know.
And let us also reflect on the lessons of history. One of Trump's most fervent followers is the Evangelical Eric Metaxas who wrote a biography on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Neo-Orthodox minister involved in the larger 20 July 1944 plot to kill Hitler. No martyr for Christ, he was hanged for his political plotting in April of 1945, just a month before the end of the war. It's a tragic story but he's not a hero - at least not from a Christian perspective. It can be seriously debated as to whether the man was really a believer. His theology is highly troubling to say the least.
Metaxas wrote a bogus biography on the man, demonstrating that he doesn't understand the context of Hitler's rise nor the state of German Christianity at the time. He really wanted to write a book about American politics and Christianity and its present culture war. He believes he's an expert on these topics and thinks (ironically) that Trump represents anti-fascism and that the Hitlerian threat is found in liberal identity politics and supposed socialism of the pro-Wall Street DNC. He has thrown 'all in' with Trump and believes this is necessary to fight the rise of fascism. The implication of his thesis is a call to violence - it was published when Obama was president. Bonhoeffer was right to join the plot to assassinate Hitler and therefore American Christians should emulate him.
Once again, I think of Paul's words about those who are deceiving and being deceived. History is filled with lessons but our ability to understand them is limited. But in some cases, such as with Metaxas, Franklin Graham and all the other Trumpite and Court Evangelicals - it's safe to say that with all the possibilities on the table, their interpretation of Providence is most certainly wrong.
Why did Trump survive the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania? We don't know. We may never know. Or, given that he is likely to win the presidency, we may know more in the coming years.
But Graham and the other Evangelicals who have sold their souls in order to gain access to power certainly do not know.
Beware their leaven.
See also: